Page:The Wheel of Time, Collaboration, Owen Wingrave (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1893).djvu/220

212 "Don't I hear voices in the hall?"

"Those remarkable young men are there."

"They'll help me." And Kate Julian descended.

Spencer Coyle was tempted to follow her, but remembering his standard of tact, he re joined his wife in their apartment. He delayed, however, to go to bed, and though he went into his dressing-room, he couldn't bring himself even to take off his coat. He pretended for half an hour to read a novel; after which, quietly, or perhaps I should say agitatedly, he passed from the dressing-room into the corridor. He followed this passage to the door of the room which he knew to have been assigned to young Lechmere, and was comforted to see that it was closed. Half an hour earlier he had seen it standing open; therefore he could take for granted that the bewildered boy had come to bed. It was of this he had wished to assure himself, and having done so, he was on the point of retreating. But at the same instant he heard a sound in the room—the occupant was doing to the window